The effects of paid sick leave on worker absenteeism and health care utilization

Jie Chen, Chad Meyerhoefer and Lizhong Peng

Health Economics, 2020, vol. 29, issue 9, 1062-1070

Abstract: We estimate the short‐term effects of paid sick leave on worker absenteeism and health care utilization in the United States using data from the 2000–2013 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. We use both parametric and matching‐based difference‐in‐differences methods to account for nonrandom selection into jobs that offer paid sick leave and estimate the treatment effect separately for workers who gained and lost sick leave benefits. We find consistent evidence of increased absenteeism among female workers who gained paid sick leave but not for other groups. Estimates for office‐based visits are mostly statistically insignificant and may not have a causal interpretation due to preexisting trends.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4118

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:29:y:2020:i:9:p:1062-1070

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().